"Earth-Like Planet Found Orbiting the Nearest Star to the Sun"

"Proxima B is just a few light years from home."

Astronomers just discovered the closest possible Earth-like planet outside our solar system. It orbits our closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri. The planet is warm enough for liquid water, is almost certainly rocky and terrestrial, and could even have an atmosphere. At just 4.2 light years away, scientists are even wondering if this may be the closest home for life outside our solar system.

Proxima B [temporarily named] is roughly 30 percent larger than Earth, and closely orbits a star far cooler and smaller than our own. Following a month of rumors and hints, Proxima B was unveiled today in a paper in the journal Nature.

"What's amazing is how close it is," says Jeff Coughlin, a SETI astronomer working with NASA's Kepler planet-hunting mission, who was not involved in the discovery. "There's nothing in physics that would keep us from sending a probe to Proxima B within the next few decades, even with just current day technology."

"Gravitational waves: discovery hailed as breakthrough of the century"

The Guardian: The announcement is the climax of a century of speculation, 50 years of trial and error, and 25 years perfecting a set of instruments so sensitive they could identify a distortion in spacetime a thousandth the diameter of one atomic nucleus across a 4km strip of laser beam and mirror.

The phenomenon was detected by the collision of two black holes. Using the world’s most sophisticated detector, the scientists listened for 20 thousandths of a second as the two giant black holes, one 35 times the mass of the sun, the other slightly smaller, circled around each other.

At the beginning of the signal, their calculations told them how stars perish: the two objects had begun by circling each other 30 times a second. By the end of the 20 millisecond snatch of data, the two had accelerated to 250 times a second before the final collision and dark merger.

The observation signals the opening of a new window on to the universe.

“This is transformational,” said Prof Alberto Vecchio, of the University of Birmingham, and one of the researchers at Ligo. “This observation is truly incredible science and marks three milestones for physics: the direct detection of gravitational waves, the first detection of a binary black hole, and the most convincing evidence to date that nature’s black holes are the objects predicted by Einstein’s theory.”

Meanwhile... Observations closer to home reveal a long time gravitational wave... if you will.   

Man withdrawing cash from ATM in Thailand.

"New human-like species discovered in S Africa"

"The discovery of 15 partial skeletons is the largest single discovery of its type in Africa.
The species, which has been named naledi, has been classified in the grouping, or genus,Homo, to which modern humans belong."

The team of scientists who discovered the Homo naledi remains

"Sniffing women's tears dampens sexual desire in men, study suggests"

"Women's tears contain a chemical signal that lowers testosterone levels and dampens sexual desire in men, according to a team of scientists in Israel."

They studied the effect on men of sniffing fresh tears, which the researchers collected in vials as they rolled down the faces of women watching weepy movies.

The surprise discovery may help scientists solve the mystery of why humans shed tears when they're distressed or sad.

Sobel said his lab is now trying to identify what chemical in tears might be responsible for the effect and whether it is also present in men's and children's tears.

"We don't think there is something special about women's tears," he said. "We definitely predict chemical signals in men's tears and children's tears too."

Ian Sample The Guardian